Go Back to Africa! Go Back to Mexico! cartoon, 2003. (Luis Castellón; http://google.com).

It is part of the racism, narcissism, and stupidity of many US Whites to respond to protests, die-ins, boycotts, and even the most minor criticisms of systemic racism and oppression with “Go Back to Africa.” Or, “If you don’t love America, then leave,” as if most Blacks have a real choice. The amount of ignorant cruelty in these knee-jerk responses says as much about the individual racism of these supposedly right-standing Americans as it does about their comfortability with systemic racism and the psychological — if not material — benefits these Whites draw from Black suffering. Or, Native American suffering, as has been the case with the response of Whites to the Dakota Access pipeline protests over the past couple of months. Or Latino suffering, with chants of “Build that wall!,” “Send them back!,” and “Kick them out!” by Donald Trump’s exclusively White supporters for more than a year.

A few years ago, I had a White student in a World History course who was upset by my lecture about the historical consensus that the American Revolution wasn’t as transformational an event as Americans pretend. The student was so caught up that told me to “Go back to Africa” after the class. The lecture was about the nature of revolutions, and per usual, I compared the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and used various measures to compare their impact on the social order, on political systems, and on the social mobility of the citizenry after the fact. And as usual, I showed that there was much more change in France and Haiti (the latter the first successful slave-led revolution in modern history) than there would be in the new US until the Civil War.

But I had shattered a student’s worldview of America as always good, and the American Revolution and the US Constitution that followed it as part of some predestined, divinely-inspired, genius-infused plan of greatness. The result was the student yelling at me, “You’re anti-patriotic!,” “You don’t love America!,” and “If you don’t love America, you need to get out!” I mostly ignored the student’s racial Tourette’s, and got to the heart of their issue: a mediocre grade on a paper assignment and their complete misunderstanding of US history in the context of world history.

The student’s issue, though singularly unusual for me in a classroom setting, is something Blacks hear from Whites in everyday settings literally every day. Like selfish, brattish five-year-olds, many Whites claim everything and everyone as their playthings, and if we disagree, we should leave, we should suffer. But “Go back to Africa?” Even without DNA testing, demographers know half of the 44 million Blacks in the US are partly White, and about one in eight are part Native American. In my case, should I go back to Nigeria, Ghana, or the Ivory Coast, and to what group? Igbo, Yoruba, Wolof? Should I drill down, find that I’m at least one-eighth Choctaw, and apply for tribal membership, so I can live on a reservation in Oklahoma? Or should I sue the estates of the Scotch-Irish assholes who came to the US between 1795 and 1818 for owning my ancestors, for their crimes against humanity and for reparations, and then move to Edinburgh or Dublin?

No, I don’t have to leave at all. As James Baldwin said, “I insist on the right to criticize” the US “perpetually”. But if the White folk who firmly believe Blacks, Latinos, and even Native Americans ought to leave, maybe they should buy a one-way ticket to someplace that will make them feel even more at home than Europe. For these “Leave America [insert racial epithet]” people, they should seriously consider Australia. Seriously. Australia is perhaps the closest America’s Whites-first people can get to a “White man’s country” or a White person’s utopia they can find. Sure, there’s also Europe, but European immigration policies would likely lead to a high-rejection rate, due to lack of skills, higher education, and no need for political asylum.

In Australia, the image of the rugged White individual remains in full bloom. Their immigration policies are very much the ones Trump’s almost exclusively White supporters would go for. In Australia’s case, anyone without a passport or a visa coming to their shores by boat finds themselves in detention centers in the remote Southwest Pacific island nation Nauru or on Los Negros Island in Manus Province, off Papua New Guinea. For those with visas who’ve committed minor crimes like a traffic violation, those visas can be revoked automatically, and those people can be sent to deportation centers on Christmas Island (off the southwest coast of Indonesia, but an Australian territory), or in remote parts of Australia (less likely). Everyone from asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, and Syria to Britons and New Zealanders arrested for misdemeanors have all been caught up in Australia’s Migration Act, its Pacific Solution, and its post-Pacific Solution solution.

Now this is a country for American White folk who want a country mostly in line with their values. You just have to leave for Australia. One caveat, though. In 1996, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, which restricted ownership of semi-automatic and automatic weapons. But that shouldn’t matter. Whiteness should trump all for Whites who would take up my offer to leave for Australia, a continent and country of 24 million, a place that is 92 percent White.

The media trades in archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes the way an alcoholic can become drunk by just smelling ethanol from a block away. It’s been so true around every 9/11 anniversary that it’s somewhat sickening.

There are two tropes the mainstream media has used to keep Americans in a perpetual state of fear and hyper-patriotism since that gruesome second September Tuesday in 2001. One is the theme of “Never Forget” (and the most obvious Twitter hashtag ever). The only other times the mantra of “Never Forget” normally comes up is either in reference to Jews and the Holocaust or to the systematic genocide Native Americans experienced. It should also come up for Blacks and Africans regarding the Middle Passage and slavery, Aborigines in Australia, and other groups who’ve experienced the wanton destruction of their lives and culture in the relatively recent past. Of course Americans shouldn’t forget what happened on 9/11. Nearly 3,000 people died on that tragic day. But 5.9 million Jews, 8-10 million Native Americans, untold millions of Africans, Aborigines, and other groups? Not exactly a fair comparison. If we cannot consistently have empathy and sympathy for the plight of others who suffer and die in the thousands or millions — like with Syrians, Iraqis, South Sudanese — then what does “Never Forget” really mean beyond an extravagant display of navel-gazing?

The second trope the media sells Americans every year is the idea that we “came together” in the weeks after 9/11 like never before. This is some high-grade bull crap. Maybe White Americans did. Maybe Americans who saw Arab Americans, Sikhs, Black and Latinos who looked like they could be Arabs united. But to say that the US “united” in a common bond to bring each other peace in a grand display of patriotism belies the reality of what happened in the six weeks between the attacks and the passage of the USA Patriot Act.

The most poignant moment of my own 9/11 experience was on a fifteen-hour Greyhound bus trip I took from Atlanta to DC after the government grounded commercial airplanes. There was a Sikh man on our bus, who got on somewhere between Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina. Two men, one White and one Black, tried to get in the face of this man and blame him for what happened in New York, in DC, and in Western Pennsylvania. I literally had to get in between these dumb asses to keep them from doing worse than their ridiculous name-calling. If this is what the media meant/means by Americans “uniting” after 9/11, then, yes, we did, if only to show our religious and ethnic ignorance, to vent our not-so-subtle hatred and intolerance.

If we as Americans continue to commit and condone through our silence acts of hatred against Arab Americans, are we much better than the tortured souls who flew four Boeing jets as weapons of mass destruction, all in the name of Allah? If we are to defeat terrorism as a nation and a world, we must also defeat its roots, fear and hatred. If we are to be one undivided and multicultural nation united against terrorism, we can no longer tolerate incidents of terrorism against one another, no matter how much we hurt.

Welp, I was wrong. We would “Never Again” condone acts of terror against our own citizens, right? Whether through the systemic use of law enforcement as death squads against Blacks or Latinos, or the occasional White vigilante dispensing their own form of racist justice? We would unite to stop White supremacists from blowing up mosques, synagogues, and temples, to stop other Americans from harassing Arab American citizens and Sikhs for their open display of their First Amendment religious freedoms, no? We Americans would stand up for the rights of those who protest in opposition to existing examples of lethal oppression, because the American flag is about much more than the US military? Yeah, right!

Americans have proven that “united” and “never forget” are proxies for our societal narcissism. It runs as deep as anything that has taken root in American culture, including racism, individualism, and xenophobia. For me, at least, it is why media mantras like “united” and “never forget” ring hollow, despite my memories of the week that was 9/11.

“Shut up play!” That’s what the average White-bred American wants. Not just from Colin Kaepernick. They want that from all vulnerable Americans, especially those of us Black, Brown, and female. Like the chain-smoking, beer-drinking, and buffalo-wing-eating archetypes many are, these average Joes have been going after Kaepernick since Saturday afternoon, attempting to do to him virtually what their great-grandfathers would’ve done to him in the town square. These folk should know that they know nothing of the flag, the national anthem, or the Constitution they claim to believe in so forthrightly. They have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the racism and oppression that motivated Kaepernick to take his stand by sitting is alive and well, both in American institutions and in the hearts and minds of average Joes.

But so are the rules of racial standing, or race rules, for that matter (to quote both Derrick Bell and Michael Eric Dyson). In the past two days, eloquent Black ex-NFL players Hines Ward, Jerry Rice, Rodney Harrison, and Tiki Barber have all weighed in, saying dumb and racist crap in the process. “All lives matter?” “Can’t we just all get along?” Kaepernick “isn’t Black?” Who are these dumb asses? And why is the media searching for anti-Kaepernick perspectives harder than Shell is searching for Arctic oil?

Because Americans demand it. Americans want a society with a permanent underclass, where even the few who somehow “make it” swear their allegiance to the status quo. Americans want to believe that racism is a mere boogieman that can be kept in the closet and will rarely see the light of day. And, most of all, Americans want their Black and Brown athletes, especially in football, to not have brains, mouths, or a conscious. Americans wants to be entertained, not educated.

As a couple of lines from Live’s “White, Discussion” (1994) go,

I talk of freedom
You talk of the flag
I talk of revolution
You’d much rather brag

That is America in a nutshell. Nothing’s wrong with the country, but everything is wrong with those Black and Brown who are willing to say that there is. The flag and the national anthem are sacred, but the lives of those Black, Brown, and female are cheaper than sewer water. Any sweeping changes to policing, foreign and economic policies, or other aspects of American culture are met with “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!,” as if everyone Black and Brown must prove their patriotism in order to confront oppression.

So I say this. The only people who need to “shut up and play” are the ones with a Bud in one hand and three buffalo wings in the other. Shut up and play ball with America’s reality, and not with America’s symbols. Shut up and play the real game of understanding whyKaepernick is protesting and why the ideals of the flag and the anthem are daggers in the hearts of millions. Otherwise, you’re part of the problem. Period.

The famous and often loopy sports writer Frank Deford wrote this about America’s narcissistic display of celebration in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Despite the changes in location, the change in networks, and the shifts in coverage over the years, the ability of the US to celebrate its greatness as if the nation was an underdog every four years knows no bounds. Americans moralize, spin stories of wholesome athletes, and frame the games as if the rest of the world is a bunch of losers. Chuck a few words like “The Soviets,” “2.5 billion,” and “Rick Carey,” and substitute “The Chinese,” “5 billion,” and “Lilly King” or “Michael Phelps.” That, and the locale being Rio de Janeiro, are the main differences.

NBC’s coverage has been narcissistic jingoism to the extreme. If you want to see Olympians from other countries who competed but didn’t win gold — or Olympians who won gold but don’t speak English — you can pretty much forget about seeing them on NBC. BBC News has provided more of this global coverage, even in the midst of its British/British Commonwealth bias. NBC can say that it’s giving Americans what they want. Really? Primetime coverage on the mothership and spotty and often tape-delayed coverage on its other channels, with a few clips online? Wow, Americans must only care about America so much that they are willing to miss hours of inspirational stories and exemplary athletic performances. Yet apparently Americans do want the dozens of mentions of Maya DiRado’s recent marriage and new house in Atlanta, where she’ll apparently settle down like June Cleaver after The Games. That, and that most Americans expect to win, like the way L.A. Lakers fans have been at home games assuming twenty-point blowouts night after night for the better part of 60 years.

This isn’t to say that Americans haven’t achieved greatness during the Rio Games. Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Lilly King, Maya DiRado, Simone Biles, Simone Manuel, Laurie Hernandez, Michelle Carter, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Corey Cogdell-Unrein, Allyson Felix, among so many others, have had great, even historic, times. Yet Americans celebrated Ledecky’s 11-second win in the 800m final as if it was preordained magic and proof of American imperial superiority at the same time. Swimming is a resources-dependent sport, requiring Olympic-sized pools, investments in coaching, and thousands of hours of training. That Ledecky won by such a huge margin isn’t just an indication of superior athletic talent and training. It’s a reflection of a serious financial commitment by parents and public/private funds from the richest nation in the world to making gold medals in swimming a priority. It’s an example of haves versus have-nots, an unfairness baked into the cake of the Social Darwinist modern Olympics from the time they began in 1896.

Lilly King and others have moralized about their achievements being done without the enhancements of PEDs. As if American athletes are always clean. As if American Olympians haven’t been caught doping in the recent past. As if the advantages of living in a wealthy nation committed to winning above all else doesn’t translate into maximizing athletic talents in every Olympic sport. King’s bravado might have been seen as cute or wonderful by some, especially over her Russian competitor Yuliya Efimova. But it’s no different from Donald Trump bragging about how much money he has to a room full of ex-cons who served time for shop lifting or stealing a few dollars.

There’s a racial component to all of this as well. It’s okay for wholesome folks like Phelps to make Chad Le Clos look stupid, or for King to moralize about doping. Not so much in the Black-dominated track and field, or in men’s basketball, or for Blacks in swimming and gymnastics. There, Americans not only expect their Olympians to win. They expect them to know their place, not discuss race, and have their hand over their heart when the National Anthem’s playing.

U2 in “Crumbs From Your Table” (2004) asked the question — in regard to rich countries like the US — “Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?” In the case of the US, the answer is, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!,” or “Y-E-S! Y-E-S! Y-E-S!” Americans already do it to each other, through racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and plutocracy. Why would it be different for the US regarding the rest of the world?

Folks, I cannot put it any simpler than this. Imagine a baseball game in which all the players played between home plate, second base, first base, and from center field, right-center field, and far right field. It would be a harder game to watch, and it’s hard enough to sit through already. That is the state of America’s national discourse and decision-making. Perhaps it’s always been the default setting on which the US was built four centuries ago.

Crop of PNC Park (as metaphor for the political state of the US), Pittsburgh, PA, July 20 2005 (alpineinc via Wikipedia/Flickr). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

One of the more optimist points that Michael Moore attempted to make in his books Stupid White Men (2001) and Dude, Where’s My Country? (2003) was that he saw that, after all, the US was a center-left nation. Moore’s evidence came from polls suggesting that most Americans would support gun control legislation and gay marriage, were pro-choice and peace doves. His wasn’t the only White progressive voice trying to flip the script on some of the media’s narrative that the US has and remains mostly center-right politically and ideologically. Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and a host of comedians-turned-news-makers have similar points in words or deeds over the past two decades.

The problem is, they are dead wrong. The US really is center-right. Why? Because polls are but a snapshot of people and their thinking. It’s a moment where people may put on their best selves, and frequently skew their attitudes toward more forward-thinking ideals, even if they don’t believe them. Polls are about as accurate as a Soviet/Iraqi Scud missile from the First Gulf War. And they’re also about as worthless.

The media contributes to this delusion of center-left by portraying everything as if there are two sides to it. CNN, MSNBC, the major mainstream networks, even FOX News frames everything between liberal and conservative, as if 160 million people belong to one side or the other. While the best arguments on most issues tend to be left-of-center, they aren’t the best just because of one’s ideology. Most left-of-center arguments contain nuance and context, two things that have been anathema in the world of mainstream corporate media for at least a generation.

Since the press presents everything from agricultural subsidies to zoo protections as an either-or, left-or-right, good-or-bad, nuance and context are missing in action, like whole grain from Wonder Bread. So really, if there are any differences in argument, they are in degree. Being pro-choice with a plethora of restrictions is a centrist argument, not a leftist one. Being for some regulation of military-style rifles and guns is a centrist argument. Wanting to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour — the equivalent of the minimum wage in the mid-1990s — is a centrist argument.

Most scholars have it correct when they say that the Democratic Party has lurched to the right over the past forty years. That lurch kicked in big time during the Bill Clinton years. The corporate mainstream media during the DNC Convention in Philadelphia has discussed the “left-wing” of the Democratic Party all week. But they have it wrong. This so-called left-wing is really just “less centrist.”

Nothing proved this more than last night’s competing chants during Leon Panetta’s speech. “No more war!” was quickly drowned out by the narcissistic chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” These are the same chants repeated by RNC delegates in Cleveland the week before. Both chants were meant to shut up those handful of folk committed to something other than getting in line with a political process or their party’s nominee. Both chants basically said to anyone who is truly in left-center field or further left than that to “shut the hell up.” The tone and rhetoric of the two parties may be different — and stances on cultural issues may be as well. But overall, the state of the American belief in the plutocratic/oligarchic nature of our democracy and projection of American power remains strong.

For me, the 6’s are ’76, ’86, ’96, and ’06. For 2016, all I’ve done today is make BBQ chicken legs and thigh (after an hour of so of marinating), corn on the cob, mac and cheese, and New York Style blondies with chocolate chips and walnuts. It’s a rainy 240th anniversary of America’s independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. About as dreary the Mid-Atlantic and the nation, really, can be during an election cycle.

It wasn’t that way for most of my on-the-6 Independence Days. I’ve talked about my first one, the bicentennial of 1976, the summer of “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.” That Saturday down in a ship and fireworks smoked filled New York Harbor, followed a train ride with my inebriated father to New Haven. I slept more peacefully on that train ride than I probably did at home. At least, until the conductor woke us up to let us know we were in Connecticut. We were lucky the trains in and out of New York were free that day.

Typical Pittsburgh fireworks show for Independence Day, Point State Park, Pittsburgh, PA, July 4, 2014. (http://davedicello.com/).

Independence Day/Week 1996 was pretty good, if not as meandering. Me and my future spouse Angelia went to Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh to watch the fireworks. For all of the issues that po-dunk Pittsburgh has, bad fireworks shows weren’t one of them. I needed the break, after a spring of turmoil with my advisor Joe Trotter and weeks revised my then 430-page dissertation (I would end up writing seventy-five pages [net] that month while doing a second set of revisions). It rained that afternoon and early evening, but it cleared up at 8 pm, just in time for some excellent fireworks. We perched ourselves where we could see sparkles and artwork over the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers.

Tuesday, July 4th of ’06 wasn’t memorable. It was my first summer working on Boy @ The Window, and I had already began planning my escape from AED and the daily grind of nonprofit work and raising money. I think we had my sister-in-law over. I made some ribs and chicken, bought dinner rolls and macaroni salad, and talked mostly about my then nearly three-year-old son and his potty training woes. Ah, the boring stability of a more typical middle-class American life!

Of all my Independence Days — on a “6” year or not — one stands out over all the rest. Friday, July 4, 1986. It was the grand re-opening of the Statue of Liberty, courtesy of one-time Chrysler head Lee Iacocca and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, which had raised hundreds of millions to restore both symbols of American inclusion (via European immigrants, at least) and American freedom to museum-quality glory. My Mom, my idiot stepfather Maurice, and my younger siblings Sarai and Eri went down to Battery Park by Subway and Bee-Line bus to see the grand ships and fireworks for that celebration of the Statue of Liberty at 100 years old.

Not so for me and the rest of us. I took me, my older brother Darren, and my then near-seven year-old brother Maurice and nearly five year-old brother Yiscoc to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets play. It was either a 1:05 pm or 1:35 pm start, I don’t remember. What I do remember, though, is that was a beautiful eighty-five degree afternoon, beautiful because it wasn’t particularly humid, and there were no storm clouds to be found that Friday. Dwight Gooden was on the mound for the Mets, starting against the all-time great Nolan Ryan. It was built up to be a duel, and it was.

Keith Hernandez drove in a run in the first, and that was it until the top of the seventh inning, when Dr. K gave up a home run to Kevin Bass. Other than that, fly balls, walks, double-plays, and strikeouts were the order of the day. Lenny Dykstra drove in the game-winning run with a double to right-center field at the bottom of the seventh inning off of a reliever, as Ryan was out after beginning the bottom of the sixth giving up a walk and a hit. Despite giving up five walks and only striking out four, Gooden got a complete-game win, and 30,000 saw the Mets go to 54-21, well on their way toward their World Series title for 1986.

That was already a good day. But it so much better with three of my brothers there, away from 616 and Mount Vernon, hanging out, without an adult to supervise, or rather, abuse us in some way. It was one of the first times I actually felt like a responsible adult. I took the four of us down to the city on Metro-North at the Pelham stop, rode into grimy Grand Central, took the Shuttle train to Times Square, and then the 7 Subway to Shea. Maurice and Yiscoc were so enamored with the trains and the city that it seemed all they did was stare at skyscrapers and out of train windows when we weren’t at the game. Darren, though mostly quiet, at least wasn’t staring off into space plotting some revenge on me for my “5” on the AP US History Exam while doing the Wave.

It was so cheap to do what we did that day. The four upper-deck, left-of-home plate tickets we bought cost $4 each, but each hot dog was $3, and the sodas were $2. apiece Given my $3.40-per-hour job with Technisort, though, the $50 excursion wasn’t so cheap that I wasn’t thinking about sneaking a Sabrett hot dog from a street vendor in before we got to the stadium. To be sure, the hot dogs at Shea were better than my usual fare on the street or at Gray’s Papaya.

It was probably the best day I had during my Boy @ The Window years. I was with innocent family members, watching my favorite team and one of my favorite players. I was lost in the humongous human mob of New York on a double-whammy of an Independence Day weekend. I slept well that evening, knowing that I’d drawn a 10 am-2 pm shift that Saturday. I planned on buying a new Walkman at the Cross County Mall that Saturday afternoon. A normal weekend for many sixteen-year-olds was a small eye-wall in the chaotic hurricane that was my life back then.

Public spectacles, if not properly processed and analyzed, are like champagne and wedding cake at a reception. Without a filter, a spectacle can easily become empty calories and shiny objects, lacking in context and devoid of implications.

The hours-long coverage of both Muhammad Ali’s ride to his grave and the public funeral service that followed the private one in Louisville, Kentucky on Friday had its moments. Ambasador Attallah Shabazz’s heartbreak, joy, and eloquence regarding her lifelong relationship with Ali and the connections between him, her, and her father, Malcolm X. Bryant Gumbel’s somber and bittersweet speech about Ali the man and athlete, so imperfect, so flawed, and yet, nearly as great as Ali said he himself was. Billy Crystal’s ability to mix comedy and sorrow, so typical of the great comedian when he was in his heyday. Rabbi Joe Rapport’s ability to keep his words and stories simple, to make his message plain. They were the highlight of the public interfaith spectacle that despite all objections to the contrary (including my own), was all that Ali wanted in the aftermath of his death.

If the service had only consisted of this group of men and women, the service would’ve been over in under an hour, and would have accomplished all Ali apparently wanted. Sadly, other people had the opportunity to speak for Ali and on his behalf, imbuing their own selfish and whitewashing stamps on the man and his public funeral. Valerie Jarrett, one of the powers behind President Barack Obama’s Oval Office chair, read Obama’s statement commemorating Ali at the funeral. Except that Valerie Jarrett’s reading of the president’s commemorative letter sounded more like a call to America as a great and exceptional nation.

He’d have everything stripped from him – his titles, his standing, his money, his passion, very nearly his freedom. But Ali still chose America. I imagine he knew that only here, in this country, could he win it all back.

Where else was Ali going to go to continue his career? Ali was going through the courts in order to keep from going to prison for draft dodging, no? Running away would’ve made his predicament worse, not better. Ali may have chosen America between 1967 and 1970. But let’s not pretend as if Saudi Arabia, Australia, Sweden, and the USSR had invited him to live and fight heavyweight championship fights abroad as an alternative.

President 42, William Jefferson Clinton, ended the four (or was it five?) hour public funeral with his standard “I feel your pain” speech. Clinton had been crying for at least twenty minutes before he walked up the steps to the podium. His face was flush and a bright pink from grief. Clinton began with a few choked words as he stifled tears. Now, I am not saying that any of this was Clinton fakery. He has always been in the moment as long as he’s been in the public eye. And in that moment on Friday, the former president was as heartbroken as anyone in that 18,000-seat arena.

Still, Clinton managed a select choice of words that conjured up America the beautiful and the message of American individualism.

We have all seen the beautiful pictures of the humble Muhammad Ali with a boy and people visiting and driving by. I think he decided something I hope every young person here will decide. I think he decided very young, to write his own life story. I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would not be ever be disempowered. He decided that not his race nor his place, the expectations of others, positive negative or otherwise would strip from him the power to write his own story.

See how Clinton just slipped that in his eulogy, as if structural racism, economic inequality, the chaos of one’s family or community can be overcome by sheer force of will? (Or, as the researchers call it these days, “grit” and “resilience?”) Clinton snuck that American rugged individualism in there faster than a twenty-seven year-old Ali could turn out the lights and jump into bed. Or, rather, the way a sneaky teenager can spike a bowl of punch with whisky or rum.

For Ali, it wasn’t just grit or determination that was critical. He had skills that only a handful of people on the entire planet have ever possessed in any generation. The kind of skills that made him a three-time heavyweight champion. His family was working-class in the Jim Crow South, a major achievement in the 1940s and 1950s. A Louisville police officer who also happened to train boxers “discovered” Ali in 1954, when the latter was twelve years old. Maybe Ali, like me at twelve, had discovered some sense of his calling and pursued it fully. But opportunities matter. Talent matters. A background that incubates and nurtures that talent matters. Sheer will alone only gets individuals so far. Thanks for continuing to spread the American mythology, Clinton.

Clinton also said

I have spent a lot of time now, as I get older and older, trying to figure out what makes people tick, how do they turn out the way they are, how do some people refuse to become victims and rise from every defeat.

The answer isn’t merely in individual struggle, but in dismantling structures that stifle the ability of individuals to overcome. Or really, dismantling structures so that there is no need to overcome racism and inequality in the first place. The idea that it’s just the individual’s fault that they do not overcome being victims. This could just as easily be the argument that rapist Brock Turner’s father made against “Emily Poe” after his son was sentenced to only six months in county jail for sexual assault in California.

Maybe President Obama’s right. “Muhammad Ali was America. He will always be America.” But what America was he? Was he a narcissistic megalomaniac who had no empathy for the plight of the poor and vulnerable and didn’t understand structural racism and religious intolerance as fundamental obstacles to freedom? Or was he the unapologetic Black man who stood for what America ought to be, rather than the hypocrisy that America often is? Or, perhaps, Ali represents both strands of this bipolar and narcissistic American identity after all?

What this means is that while Ali can forever rest in peace, for America, peace will remain elusive.

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below: